20 AUGUST 1921, Page 3

We are very glad to find that our distrust of

the Protocols is confirmed by this new and interesting discovery. The internal evidence, as we pointed out, was calculated to arouse grave suspicion as to the veracity of Nilus, who said that a woman had stolen the documents from French Freemasons and given them to " a personal friend now deceased." But we are bound to add that the finding of the French pamphlet of 1865 does not clear up the whole mystery. Mrs. Webster has pointed out earlier parallels for some of the fantastic and criminal elements of the Protocols, and it is probable that Joly himself took his ideas from the same fount of revolutionary mysticism. We should like to know how far that evil movement persists in a tangible form, and why the Protocols appeared in Russia in 1905. The suggestion that they are merely a clever piece of anti-Semitic propaganda does not suffice.